Lea Salonga has been hired by Disney and other production companies to do voice and animation that she has become a household name. Among these productions are Aladdin (as Jasmine), Mulan (as Mulan's singing voice) and My Neighbor Totoro (as the Mother). Everyone's excited to hear Lea sing the theme song live - almost everyone took out their cameras and started recording her sing at one of Dayo's press conferences last Thursday at Discovery Suites.

Someone asked Lea what differs the project she's done for Dayo with her other projects like Mulan and Aladdin. She said that she had to project more with voice acting - for Dayo, Lea said she just had to "believe every word I'm singing". Very timely for Filipinos as it will hopefully up the bar for animation as an industry.

Gerry Salonga is also involved in this project as the conductor of the 35-piece FILharmoniKA Orchestra which recorded the whole soundtrack of the movie.

Here are some note-worthy and amusing questions from the media during the press conference:

Won't other children abroad get scared of the "manananggal" on the film?

Dayo's Musical director Jessie Lasaten says that animation is usually made to showcase culture and Dayo is the perfect opportunity for Filipinos to show the international community the rich culture we have. The concept behind Anna's (the girl manananggal) character was inspired from the different species of bats - a fruit bat to be more exact. There are manananggals who eat human flesh while there are others, like Anna, that are vegetarians.

If you do subtitles for international release, how will you translate "manananggal"?

Director Robert Quilao says that they haven't really thought about it and maybe they can translate mananaggal as a "self-decapitating creature."

What do you call the kind of animation used in this film?

Jessie Lasaten says they call this cross between 2d and 3d animation as "tradigital" animation. They used the same software and equipment as the animators at Pixar.

How much did the production of Dayo cost:

Robert Quilao estimated the project to cost 1.7 MILLION USD - and he said that it's pretty cheap. And right now, the projected cost is still changing because they're bringing the whole film to Technicolor Thailand to make it at par with international standards - a 7.1 conversion outcome which is a first for a Filipino-made movie.